Stray Hawkeye

People tend to be pretty fond of ripping on pictures of models that have been overly Photoshoped to make them look “beautiful” (big air quotes there, ie – like anorexic, heroine addicted 13 year old boys with boob jobs, who may also be of an alien species), and rightfully so.  However, focusing just on photoshop also overlooks all the tricks that have been going on since long before digital retouching really hit its stride.  Namely, it overlooks the huge effects of make up and lighting.  This series of the same model with a variety of different make up and lighting is stunning. (via Kottke)

You don’t need Benjamin Button priced CGI to create effective false perceptions.

I’d like to see a website that consists of an interactive tree, displaying which company owns which other companies / brands. For instance, show that Pepsi owns Frito-Lay, Quaker Oats, and Tropicana (among many others), and then show that Quaker Oats in turn owns Cap’n Crunch, Aunt Jemima Syrups (but not frozen foods), Rice-A-Roni, Gatorade, and so on. Direct ownership would be considered a strong link.

You could also show weak links, such as person A sits on the board for company X and Y, or investment firm Q owns a large percentage of company J and K.  For instance, Indra Nooyi, who is the CEO of PepsiCo is also a Class B director of the Board of Directors of the New York Federal Reserve, as is Jeffrey R. Immelt, who is the CEO of GE. GE owns NBC and Universal Studios. NBC co-owns MSNBC with Microsoft. Denis M. Hughes is a Class C director on the Board of Directors of the New York Federal Reserve and he’s also President of the New York State AFL-CIO. And James Dimon is a Class A director on the Board of Directors of the New York Federal Reserve, and he’s CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co, which owns Chase. And on, and on, and on.

Ideally you would show all of this in visual, interactive form (click on a company and it expands out its associations). Bonus points if you use corporate logos to represent each brand/company.  It could look something like this for showing the connections listed above, and a couple more:

In photo shopping that graphic, I’d say there’s already a need for a way to show/hide some things so it’s not just enormous, and the links probably need directional arrows to show who owns who, and maybe labels to show what exactly the relationship is.  You would probably also need a way to decide which way is up (market cap?), and how to space things, because in the above, it looks like Microsoft and Pepsi are closely linked since they’re next to each other, but they’re actually fairly far apart (as far as I can tell).

If you’re really ambitious, you could also show links through things like business partnerships (companies linked to Microsoft through large scale licensing deals), memberships in various professional consortiums (like the W3C or the IEEE), or ongoing advertising deals (Target Field / the Twins). You could also show who competes with who in what market. That would be really interesting.

You could also work in time phasing it.  Such as, when did Pepsi acquire Quaker Oats? Who owned it before?  Where did Indra Nooyi work before becoming Pepsi CEO?  It becomes a sort of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon after not too long.  Which is really a little scary in its own way.  Throw in political campaign contributions and we’re really cooking with fire.

I admittedly only know a very small subset of how different companies relate to each other, but I always find it fascinating and I think there’s a fair number of people who would like to know more about this kind of thing, so you’ve got an audience. I’m not sure how freely available this kind of information is, but I would assume it’s public knowledge for any publicly traded company (all the stuff I used to make this post is from Wikipedia and reasonably easy to trace).  It would just be a matter of finding and organizing the data, and then presenting it in a more understandable manner than how it currently exists.

Of my free ideas so far, this is the one that I’ve gone back and forth the most on actually doing, so if you do give it a try, let me know, I’d be glad to work on it some.  If I ever find myself bored or just in need of a break, I might work on it some anyway.  So, this one’s more of a “half free but I’m still holding on to it a little bit” idea.  Perhaps a “partnership idea Friday”.

Quick back story: There has been a lake creature floating around the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis this summer (seriously).  She appeared in early July and has been touring the lakes since.  In mid-July it was “adopted” by the Minneapolis Park Foundation, and has since been nicknamed Minne.  I think she’s the great great grand niece of Nessie.  She looks like this:

Now, onto the actual post, and yes, this is the most coherent way I could think of to put all the thoughts together…

I was out running around the lakes and saw you out there again, over in the west part of Lake of the Isles now.  Sorry I haven’t written sooner, but you keep moving around and are a little hard to keep track of.  Besides, where does one address a letter to you?  “Lake Creature, About 50 feet off the west shore of Lake of the Isles, Minneapolis, MN 55405″?  So, I figured I’d try a blog post instead and see if you happen to read it.  Anyway, while I was running, I was thinking, with it getting cold out like it is, we really need to get you ready for the winter here.  After all, I figured I should do what I can to help out a fellow stray.

The winters here can get pretty rough, and the lakes freeze.  Don’t worry though, even though it’s cold, you’ve still got a couple months.  The lakes take a while to cool down that much, plus, I’ve got a plan, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

So, I’m not sure where you’re from originally, but we celebrate Halloween here.  We dress up in costumes, and go around asking for candy, and people actually give you candy on this day!  So, I thought we should get you a costume to help you fit in a little more.  While I was running tonight, I was trying to think of how we could dress you up.  The first thing I thought of was that we could put a jack-o-lantern on your back.  Like this:

Minne with a pumpkin

It would be pretty festive, really simple and easy to do, and would really get you participating in the holiday.  Then I thought about it a little more, and it would probably roll off in the wind, and you’d have to hold pretty still.  Besides, who wants a rotting hunk of gourd on their back?  Not me.  So, I kept thinking.

My next thought was that you could dress up as a pirate.  It’s a pretty classic Halloween costume, and you’ve already got the nautical theme going:

Yarrrrrgh Minne

But then I thought about that a little more too.  The hat would probably fly off pretty quickly, and I’m not sure how you’d hold onto the pirate flag.  Plus, we can’t really see your hook / peg flipper (do you have flippers or legs under there?).  So, I kept thinking.

Next I thought zombie.  But that would probably be way too scary for little kids around the lakes, and you already missed the zombie pub crawl this weekend.  So, I kept thinking.

My next idea was Superman – a classic first Halloween costume!

Super-Minne, away!!

I like it, but I’m not sure the cape will look all that good when the wind isn’t blowing just right, and I’m not sure how you feel about spandex, being a lake creature and all.

So, I kept running and kept thinking.  Anyway, it’s getting cold out, and some birds are starting to visit the lakes.  And then I thought of the perfect Halloween costume for you, something that would be a great costume, fit you perfectly, and really make you blend in to the Minneapolis lake scene.

Minne in a goose suit

A little down for the body, maybe some foam or cotton stuffing to make the tail stay up, a little face paint, and a beak with an elastic strap to keep it on.  Not only will you fit right in, it will keep you warm for the next couple of months too!  Plus, you totally have the neck for it!

Besides, this way you can make some friends with the geese out there as they pass through, and get some good tips on where to spend the winter months.  I’m sure they know all sorts of great places!  I think you might like the everglades.  Some of them might even let you travel with them.  I’m sure they’d love to have you leading the “V”!  Of course, maybe you were thinking this already, I saw on your Twitter account that you said “When it becomes cold, I turn into a snow bird”.  Maybe we strays think alike after all!

Anyway, let me know if you need some help with the costume, I’m not great at sewing, but I could give it a shot,

Kearn

Amazon recently announced the release of the Kindle DX, an updated, larger Kindle.  If you’re unfamiliar, the Kindle an e-reader.  Basically a special purpose laptop optimized for reading books – sharp but grey scale screen to make it easier on the eyes, light weight, long battery life.  The original can be found here, and the DX can be found here.  E-book fans have been quite excited about the larger screen of the DX, but a little leary of the high price.  A little bit about it’s release here, here, and more extensively here.  What does a Kindle DX look like you may ask.  I envision something like this:

Or this:

Strayhawkeye.com, your number one source for e-reader / Pro-Wrestling cross-over photoshop puns.  (Explained here.)

So Pepsi recently redesigned their logo:

(image grabbed from Pepsi’s website)

My first thought was – wow, that looks like the logo for a South Korean airline.  Anyone else?

How about now?  (New Year’s resolution – get better at photo shop so lame sight gags like that don’t take an hour to make.)

So, I actually looked up what a real Korean Airline logo looks like, and, really, not that far off:

A little different, but really, I think think the Pepsi logo would fit Korean Airlines better than their current logo.  Make it a little more modern and sleek.

So in watching bits of the RNC, it occurred to me that there’s the perfect opportunity for some really good ads by anyone opposing the Republicans/Bush (and I can’t imagine people of that temperament are in short supply these days).  It struck me that the overall set up, with the giant screen behind the podium, especially with Bush’s speech projected on it:

could have some cultural resonance.  Specifically to this ad, from Apple:

It actually already got spoofed by the Obama people against Hillary:

And given the giant screen / mindless crowd set up already in place at the RNC, half of your editing work is already done for you.  They’ve even posted videos of all of the speeches here.  Plus, it could make it really easy to repurpose the images from the RNC in everyone’s minds for their parallels to this.

If you’re doubting my claims of the “mindless crowd” at the RNC, I was talking to one of my friends who was a delegate (one of the Ron Paul people we got elected), and apparently aside from all of the made for TV-ness that was apparent, there was even more you might not have noticed.  Many of those home made looking signs were actually made by the McCain campaign and handed out on the floor.  They also handed out cards with numbered chants, a la- Chant 1 – “Country First, Country First”, Chant 2 – “Drill, Baby, Drill”, Chant 3 – “U.S.A.”, more on that last one here.

(A side note – Fans at WWE Professional Wrestling events often also chant “U.S.A.” when one of the “bad guy” characters billed as being from another country, such as Russia or India, is in the ring and receiving more attention than they like.  The RNC and WWE probably have more in common than most people care to realize.  And yet people think it’s odd Minnesota elected a former pro wrestler Governor. )

At any rate, apparently “Live Free or Die”, “Make love, not war”, and “FREEDOM!!!” were not in the cards at the RNC.

So, I will admit that with the close of the Olympics, I’m a little disappointed.  It’s obvious that the Chinese put a huge amount of time, effort, and money into these games.  This is especially true of all of the venues that were designed and built specifically for the games.  With all of this, I find it, well, a little rude that a certain guest did not appear.

I know he probably wasn’t explicitly invited, but with the massive, and distinctively designed, Beijing National Stadium (christened by many “The Bird’s Nest”), it is obvious they were hoping for an appearance.  His presence would show that they have arrived as a country.  A passing of the torch of sorts.  A symbol of power and strength settling in their lands.

I know, I know, it would have been a long flight for him, and to a country he’s not used to, when he’s getting up there in age.  But still, architecture like this can not go unrecognized by it’s obvious muse.  I’m speaking, of course, of Rodan.

Come on, at no point during the Olympics did this image cross your mind?

I gotta learn Photoshop better, because that took forever.